Eliza Stacey's Letter

The letter was written by Eliza Stacey to her father in law, Edward Stacey, impassionately described the hardships of her current situation at home, due to her husband's imprisonment. Eliza Stacey wrote her letter to persuade her father in law to help her family once again.
Eliza Stacey opened her letter by stating her current hopelessness and sorrowfully reported the misery that her family went through. The opening sentence is highly exaggerated and unqualified. The mood of the letter is established through the opening sentence with Stacey’s usage of syntax and diction. Eliza Stacey includes words like, “frustrated,” “depressed,” and “disappointment” (lines 4-5), in the opening sentence. By using these words, not only did she emphasize the current life situation, she also expressed her hopelessness. Stacey began her letter with this sentence to set the despairing mood and …show more content…
She stated, “ I dare not dwell longer on our serious situation for fear of distressing you too much, and causing myself an upset just at this time when I can least sustain it,” (85-88). This understatement was to convey the amount of stress placed upon her, a pregnant woman in the cold. Throughout this whole letter, Eliza Stacey does not directly ask him for help and the understatement of the closing part of the letter was to show that she only wanted to vent her despair. She mentions that she is worried about the effect this may have on him and that she does not want to trouble him. In reality, Stacey's main goal of the letter was to persuade her father in law to assist her family once again by sending money. By using understatement in the last section of the letter, Eliza Stacey was attempting to make Edward Stacey feel as if it was his duty to help out his pregnant daughter in law. Even though, she does not bluntly ask for his